


Ego Death

by Slyboots



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Dehumanization, Experimental Style, Gen, Mad Science, Psychological Horror, Science Fiction, Soundwave Week 2020, Transhumanism, consensual body modification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25122706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slyboots/pseuds/Slyboots
Summary: “I do not need your consent,” said Shockwave, and metal claws bit gently into the tentacles’ silicone and drew them with a whoosh from their tank, “but I will remember it.”The gladiator who will become Soundwave undergoes a series of transformations.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42
Collections: Soundwave Week 2020





	Ego Death

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Soundwave Week 2020.

After the light, screeching through his cracked optics and searing tender wires, came the merciful dark--

\--and he lay witless and blind on the surgical table, soothed by the instruments’ thrumming, the crackle of current. The world was simpler heard than seen. He luxuriated in it, in the whisper of Shockwave’s mini-servos, in the distant unsteady beep of consoles. His armor vibrated; beneath it his mesh hummed, picking up the frequency.

“I received no instructions.” The surgical table quaked; Shockwave’s leaden footfalls receded. “Your technical specifications were unavailable. I may be forced to improvise--”

_ Forced _ . A disingenuous choice of words.

In the barracks and in the Pits, from Kolkular to Wreckage Row, Shockwave’s designation was whispered. The weakest invoked Shockwave like a deity, as if his mercy might uplift them; the strongest cursed him, and rubbed scars or misshapen limbs.

The gladiator had known Shockwave once, in passing--but he was not given to nostalgia, and that had been, after all, so very long ago and so very far away.

The gladiator slung an arm off the surgical bed, and in the rich dark he groped for a cable. The rubber casing he slit with a forefinger; unhinging the tip of his finger he stroked the cable, and data poured from him, charge humming and buzzing round his exposed terminals. Images spun, laser-sharp, in the gladiator’s processor.

A smooth tempered-glass visor, stripped of identity. The delight of anonymity.

_ Look. Look. _

The table shook, stinging the gladiator’s mesh. An arm’s length away now, Shockwave’s motors squeaked.

“This will do,” said Shockwave, and the gladiator imagined him pleased. “An atypical design. Impractical for close combat. It will be--satisfactory to construct.”

To sweeten the deal the gladiator transferred ten thousand credits, with a short sharp prickle up his forearm. To this Shockwave paid no attention--

And the gladiator did not attempt it again.

“Do not imagine me naive,” droned Shockwave. “I am well aware of what I do.”

His voice was recognizable still, though flat from disuse. “Acknowledged.”

The gladiator hung in pieces, fractured blue armor peeled back. A shed husk; an outgrown self.

“There will be repercussions.”

“Acknowledged,” said the gladiator patiently. In Shockwave’s unblinking optic he saw his own featureless visor reflected, and in his visor Shockwave’s vacant stare: an infinite hall of mirrors.

Shockwave’s  _ empurata _ was a fine example of the form; rumor held it had been voluntary. This the gladiator believed (if he believed anything).

“You will be held responsible in the event of failure,” said Shockwave, in a tone that suggested he did not much care. “A highly experimental procedure performed on a once-prominent citizen--”

“Irrelevant,” said the gladiator. “Continue.”

He felt a twitch of joy, seeing the cables writhe and twitch in their tank of nutrient broth. Though Shockwave’s motor was unnaturally steady, his voice admirably anonymous, in the tilt of Shockwave’s head the gladiator thought he saw pride--

\--and a most unscientific glee.

“I do not need your consent,” said Shockwave, and metal claws bit gently into the tentacles’ silicone and drew them with a whoosh from their tank, “but I will remember it.”

The gladiator watched the installation, and filed the memory away. From such memories one constructed a self, piecemeal.

The fiber optics knit; the graft held.

Shockwave showed no mawkish pity, nor patronizing concern. This the gladiator appreciated; in the High Council he’d heard too much talk.

He was adept now with his tentacles. As they checked over the blueprints, the gladiator plucked up a wrench, turning it this way and that, savoring the soft scritch of his feelers on the steel.

Shockwave tilted his head this way and that, watching. Admiring his handiwork, the gladiator knew. “Your nervous system is recovering more quickly than projected.”

“Yes,” said the gladiator, in a flatter voice now.

“I may be forced to clear your return to the pit within the quartex.” In this the gladiator heard a tinge of irony; Shockwave would not be coerced, by threats nor by money. “I look forward to seeing how you perform with seven limbs.”

“Yes.” He let the wrench fall from one tentacle, snatching it up in midair with another. The soft click delighted him; when had he last been so delighted?

The gladiator found he could not remember.

“The cortical psychic patch has been successful in preliminary tests. As an alternative to mnemosurgery--” This Shockwave said with some distaste. The scorn of an innovator for an outmoded technique. “--it will no doubt galvanize the Council and Senate.”

The gladiator listened politely, and stored the words away.

He’d spoken against mnemosurgery once, before he’d come to Kaon. This he recalled with only mild interest. Already his memories felt impersonal, as if he’d been merely a clerk dutifully recording history as it happened.

(He’d been powerless in the face of tradition; the Senate had been moribund, and windbags to a bot. He’d denounced them--)

“You will likely survive the procedure. Given your legal status--”

“Proceed.”

“--in the event of a failure--”

The gladiator found his patience waning. “Consent. Proceed.”

“--whatever remains of you will be subjected to a full autopsy--”

He could scarcely recall whether the senator-who’d-been would’ve objected. The gladiator approved. How fresh he felt, how light, how unburdened by his own history.

“In the event of success, your memory capacity will be functionally infinite. Within the projected lifetime of a gladiator--” Here he detected something smirking, something unbecoming, in Shockwave’s tone. “--you will be a walking data repository--”

The gladiator cut him off, tonelessly. “Objection: I do not intend to die young.”

Shockwave regarded him, the cold red glow of his optic pooling on the gladiator’s sleek armor. In the chill of the laboratory, the gladiator’s fiber optics tingled, vividly alert; under Shockwave’s gaze he felt the steady weight of his plating against the surgical bed, the restraints stinging-hot, the excited thrum of his own engine.

“Then eventually you will need me again,” said Shockwave, and his optic shuttered lazily, as if satisfied. He reached for the closest tentacle, peeling back the silicone, unlacing the wires. As Shockwave’s good hand combed through his fiber optics, the gladiator twitched, just a little, at the unexpected intimacy.

Shockwave reached for the cortical psychic patch, and the gladiator’s consciousness cut out.

He sank into a howl of sound, of light.

In Shockwave’s clinic the gladiator recuperated, over several solar cycles. By degrees his memory returned.

“The elision of your self-concept from your episodic memory banks was eighty-nine point seven percent complete,” said Shockwave, as the gladiator struggled to stand. “Ninety-eight point four percent of existing memories were retained in greater than ninety-five percent fidelity--”

It had meant something once, and the gladiator’s tentacles clutched at the air as he struggled to recall.

Shockwave loomed over him, expressionless and almost motionless; the gladiator knelt in a pool of ruby optic-light.

“In terms you may find easier to understand,” said Shockwave, as if it were merely interesting trivia, “your memories are no longer yours.”

Again Shockwave made no move to help him; again the gladiator found it refreshingly honest. With one tentacle he groped for the surgical berth. Under his own weight his knees buckled--

\--and again he clutched the berth, and with the soft rustle of motors he levered himself to his feet. Of this he was proud, for a klik.

“Theoretical work by Chromedome suggests other methods may be used to enlarge memory banks,” intoned Shockwave, watching the gladiator. “However, given access to a willing patient--”

“Yes.”

“--the opportunity to explore the  _ depersonalizing _ effects--”

He fought faster with seven limbs than with four; he fought faster, stripped of the mech he’d been.

Bout after bout he won, with a savage pride, and that disconcerted him more than anything.

With the hot Energon of the slain staining his perfect visor, with the crowd bellowing his designation-that-was-not-a-designation, the gladiator S-28 tilted his head, and listened, and searched for something like calm--

He spoke not a word. Yet his engine picked up a notch, and roared.

“Request,” he said, in a tone flatter even than Shockwave’s. “Deletion of unique synthesizer voiceprint.”

“Done,” said Shockwave brusquely, and the gladiator felt another part of his old self peel away with a soft whoosh of static.

“Request,” he said, in Shockwave’s voice, on another occasion. “Removal of serial number.”

“A simple surgery. One could have it performed in any clinic in Kaon--”

Shockwave seemed almost irked: as if the gladiator were condescending to him.

“No. No. Clarification: not filing off.  _ Removal. _ ”

He haunted Shockwave’s clinic, padding through the halls at all hours. Enjoying the sound of his own footfalls--and enjoying, too, anonymity.

Shockwave attempted no small talk, and made no pretense of intimacy.

“You seek complete ego death,” intoned Shockwave, his face-that-was-not-a-face glowing in the datapad’s drab light. “You seek to become a  _ tool _ , a mere repository for data--a witness--”

“Irrelevant,” said the gladiator.

Reflected backward on Shockwave’s chestplate he read a manuscript on Rungian analysis, half-completed.

“Out of nihilism, some hack psychiatrists might assume,” droned Shockwave, and in it the gladiator caught again the biting arrogance, the self-satisfaction. “But I have seen the structure of your thoughts. I have seen the desire for  _ purity _ \--”

“Irrelevant,” said the gladiator again, pleased with the flatness of his voice, the indifference. “Request: review blueprints and suggestions.”

Shockwave’s motors squeaked; in the numb quiet the gladiator heard Shockwave’s coolant rushing, heard rivets strain, heard the tiny spare sounds of Shockwave’s frustration. Into the data pad Shockwave tapped notes, his cadence brisk and irritated.

By night the gladiator searched the Grid, trawling for Shockwave’s name.

Shockwave had published four articles describing a loosely-anonymized case. With faint amusement, the gladiator noted that he’d left out the most damning details.

In the end all bots were the same: Shockwave, too, was driven by self-interest, by ego, by the desire to be acknowledged (the desire  _ not to be stopped _ )--

The disappointment stuck in the gladiator’s throat; the disappointment rattled round his processor. He found himself clenching and unclenching his tentacles, clutching at the air for something he could not name.

“Question: your  _ empurata _ .”

Shockwave’s antennae whirred, flattening against his helm. His motor picked up a notch. “As you might say, that is  _ irrelevant _ to our current discussion.”

The light of Shockwave’s optic poured into the gladiator’s open chest cavity, illuminating tender wires and delicate valves. The gladiator watched, and admired the beauty of it, the soft whirs.

“Question. Voluntary?”

Shockwave stiffened, the light pooling now over the gladiator’s visor. “Yes.”

They met each other’s gaze, and again the gladiator saw himself reflected, faceless and anonymous, smooth and impenetrable. Scarcely a mech now, but a monument to an ideal, sculpted in living metal--

“My motives are of no concern to you,” said Shockwave, testily. “What matters is the work.”

“Yes.”

“The work that will outlive any of us--”

“Yes,” said the gladiator, savoring the little buzz of his synthesizer. “Yes.” He said it in Shockwave’s voice. “Yes.” In Halogen’s pompous sneer. “Yes.”

He remembered Shockwave’s greedy gaze, drinking him up. He remembered the dry case studies, disseminated on the Grid, of a mech longing for rebirth--

“You understand,” said Shockwave, “that your emotional responses will be obliterated.”

“Yes.”

“That you will be a being of pure logic--”

And Shockwave seemed almost to envy that.

“Yes. Yes, yes, yes--”

Shockwave tilted his head, and the gladiator savored the little sounds of him, the soft scrape of metal on metal. Such joy there was in sound, such depth and such texture--

“I have,” said Shockwave, “awaited this. The completion of our work together.”

And he threw the switch.

  
  


“Query. Success?”

He could not remember what he’d felt, in the instant before losing consciousness; the memories drifted, as if behind a glass pane, just out of his reach.

“In every detail,” said Shockwave, in a tone the gladiator could not read.

The gladiator turned it over in his mind, contemplating. “Good,” he said, at last. And then: “Proposal. Obliteration of old personality subroutines complete. Novel designation required.”

Vaguely he remembered beauty, and depth, and texture. Vaguely he remembered the soft satisfaction he’d taken, listening to Shockwave move round the lab, the soft burr of his motor; he’d loved sound, though he recalled not why--

“Proposed designation: Soundwave.”

And after all, Soundwave thought, it scarcely mattered what the gladiator had loved, nor what he'd wanted.


End file.
